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Lafayette Church of Christ
This World Was Never Home
Sunday Bible Class & Morning Sermon · August 16, 2026
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Two lessons that both turn our eyes past this life: a Bible class opening the book of Ecclesiastes and its picture of chasing this world like smoke, and the sermon launching a new series on living as people sent into a world that is no longer their home.
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At a Glance
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Scripture
Ecclesiastes 1 (class) & John 17, Acts 17 (sermon)
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Speakers
This week's Bible class teacher & preacher
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Theme
What we chase here is like smoke, and this world is not our home.
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Part One · Sunday Bible Class
Grasping at Smoke
Ecclesiastes 1
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Not the Same Wisdom as Proverbs |
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Our teacher opened a study of Ecclesiastes, an often skipped-over book, with a warning: it is not a book of wisdom the same way Proverbs is. Proverbs gives one-liners of concrete, eternal truth. Ecclesiastes gives an entire worldview, one man wrestling with the question, "What is the point of all of this?" |
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To feel its tone, he asked three people what they did over the weekend, and answered each in the book's own bleak voice: football games "out in the heat, and all for what;" an oil change and a soccer game that "doesn't change the fact that we're all just going to die one day." That outlook, he said, is arguably one of the most depressing in all of Scripture. |
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So we don't cherry-pick verses here as if each were pure wisdom. We read it the way we read Job, as the honest record of a person's outlook, and the wisdom is found in us wrestling with it alongside him. |
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Who is the "preacher" speaking? The traditional and easiest answer is Solomon, a son of David and king in Jerusalem with unmatched wisdom and wealth (Ecclesiastes 2). What makes the book so unsettling: if it is Solomon, then the wisest, richest man who ever lived reached the end and still found no gold in the pot. |
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Ask Yourself
The preacher had everything this world offers and still came up empty. What is the thing you keep telling yourself will finally be enough, if you could just get a little more of it? Be honest about whether it could actually satisfy you the way you're hoping.
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"Vanity of vanities" is the book's famous opening. The Hebrew word behind it, hevel, appears nearly thirty times and has no clean English equivalent. It takes a handful of words together to get at it: meaningless, futile, fleeting, an enigma or puzzle we can't quite solve. |
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Most literally, hevel is the word for smoke. And smoke is a strange thing: it is real, but you can't grab a handful and carry it to someone. You can only bring them to see it. Yet its very presence proves there is a fire, something greater, behind it. |
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So picture yourself sitting over a fire, determined, grabbing at the smoke. How long before you're frustrated? Before you're mad? A person who spends not minutes but a whole life doing that, our teacher said, is the preacher of Ecclesiastes, and that image is his outlook on life. |
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Notice the end of verse 3: all of this is what man does "under the sun." We have not yet reached the point in the book where God enters, and that matters. Like James' picture of life as a vapor, the book begins at the lowest of lows on purpose, and it will go somewhere from there. |
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Ask Yourself
If the smoke you keep grabbing at is proof of a fire, of Someone greater behind it all, then how much of your energy goes into clutching the smoke, and how little into turning to look at the fire? What would it change to stop grasping and start seeking Him?
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Key Quotes · Bible Class
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This week's Bible class teacher · on the meaning of hevel
“Its entire presence is the proof of someone greater.”
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This week's Bible class teacher · on studying the book
“The book starts at the lowest of lows, and we're going to get somewhere from here.”
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Part Two · Morning Sermon
Make This Your Mission Field
John 17:14–18 · Acts 17 · from the new series “Mission-Minded”
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This new series comes under the year's banner, "Here I am, send me," from Isaiah 6. But the honest question, our preacher said, is not whether "the church" is mission-minded. It's personal: am I? A church is only mission-minded if the people in it are. |
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In John 17, Jesus prays not that we be taken out of the world, but that we be kept from the evil one and sent into it: "As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them." We are guarded in the world, not sheltered away from it. |
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Love, he said, is wanting what is best for someone, whether they want it or not. And here is the hinge: if you belong to the kingdom, what is best for the kingdom is what is best for you. When those two things pull in different directions, it says something about where we really stand. |
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We serve a missional God, one who has sent His people from the very beginning: Adam and Eve out of the garden, Noah, Abraham. If we are truly becoming like Him, we are becoming more mission-minded in how we live and walk and treat the people around us. |
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Ask Yourself
It's easy to put "the church" under the microscope and ask if it's mission-minded. Turn the question on yourself: is your home, your workplace, your ball field a mission field to you? Name one person there God may have placed in front of you on purpose.
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Which Room Do They Need First? |
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The first step of mission work isn't stepping off the plane, it's the prep: learning the language, the culture, the people. In Acts 17, Paul enters the synagogue (part house of worship, part community center) and listens before he speaks, asking questions and learning what the people value. |
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This isn't people-watching for entertainment, our preacher said, it's studying people with purpose: what matters to them, in order to reach them. So Paul crafts his message to his audience, scripture for the Jews, their own philosophers for the Athenians, citizenship for the Philippians. |
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The gospel, he said, is a house so deep you could get lost in it, full of rooms. Knowing someone lets you know which room to bring them into first: the hungry to the kitchen and the Bread of Life, the exhausted to a seat and the promise of rest, the hurting to a place of healing. It never changes the gospel, only which side of it you show first. |
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But there is a danger in being sent back into the world we were saved out of: it may become home again. Like the recovering addict who won't go near the old places, or Demas, who Paul says was "in love with this present world" and deserted him. Do we know this world to reach it, or because we're still in love with it? |
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Ask Yourself
Think of one person outside of Christ you actually care about. Do you know them well enough to know which "room" they need first, what they're hungry for, tired of, hurting from? And a harder one: are you studying this world to reach it, or have you quietly started calling it home again?
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Key Quotes · Sermon
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This week's preacher · on the kingdom
“What is best for the kingdom is what is best for us if we're in the kingdom.”
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This week's preacher · on the hardest mission field
“The hardest mission field is being sent back into the very home that we were saved out of.”
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Last week: James pressed that faith without works is dead, and Cameron watched Jesus overturn the tables of a worship that had grown cheap.
Lafayette Church of Christ · August 16, 2026
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